database management

Database Management: 5 Pointers to Make Sure Your Firm Has Quality Information

Bylori

The success of your business depends in large part on the quality of the information contained in your customer database. With poor or outdated data negatively affecting up to 40 percent of a company’s objectives, it pays to make sure your database management supports high-quality information that will return results.

  1. Check and monitor database accuracy: Up to two-thirds of the contact information in an average database will change during the year, so take advantage of current technologies that allow you to ensure data freshness and validity. If you or someone on your sales team knows of information that has changed, make sure the change is reflected in the database immediately.
  2. Expand your database at every opportunity: Add new information to your customer database whenever you discover it. Use techniques such as reverse email to find more information on the recipient, such as name, position and job title. Go directly to the customers listed in your database and ask them to fill out surveys and questionnaires that will provide additional information you can include in your database.
  3. Be concise when first asking for information: Initial contact or online forms should ask for no more than three items: first name, last name and email address. Once a potential client has given you this information and granted permission to contact them, then reach out with additional surveys and data-gathering techniques.
  4. Broaden your research: Dedicate company resources and database management efforts to conducting more research on your current customers and, more importantly, on their colleagues and competitors within their industry. Locate contact information for these other companies and evaluate the value of marketing to them. Use data you find to help locate partnerships with the highest potential.
  5. Find out what works and keep doing it: As you develop methods for monitoring and expanding your customer database, identify what techniques are the most successful and continue applying them. Keep looking for new ways to acquire and analyze customer data, but don’t stop doing what works.

Is your customer database up to date? If not, how could these techniques help you strengthen your database management?

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